[Darkfather]

The main reason for the decrease in weapon range and calibre size turns out to be statistics, which is why you have special operations bucking the trend for smaller and shorter ranged rounds and why it seems armies adapt in strange ways. For the average infantry solider 5.56 is the best round for the job. For special operations, whose requirements are different, a different round / weapon combination is sometimes needed, but many of these units still carry 5.56 when they could use anything they wanted.

Likely we will see a new general infantry cartridge developed or adopted in the next decade, although I tend to think the trend will be to smart ammunition in the next generation of infantry weapons.

Inaccuracies in game modeling are why some games give advantages to some weapons when real life trends tend to the other direction. In reality the firepower of an M16 is significantly greater than the Enfield unless they meet in very disparate tactical situations. The enfield is incapable of generation good enfilade fire, and has little or no tactical throw or chance of disrupting a trained squad. Unless the shooter has a fixed sniper nest and good side cover, the M16 user has it all their own way. 2 extra hexes range is a poor trade off for loosing the real life ability to force a squad to ground.